Portugal: Fiber Broadband Presents the Most Attractive Opportunity for Telecom Operators,' a new Country Intelligence Report by the author, offers a precise, incisive profile of Portugal's mobile and fixed telecommunications based on comprehensive proprietary data and insights from our research in the Portuguese market. Published annually, this presentation-quality, executive-level report provides detailed analysis of the near-term opportunities, competitive dynamics and evolution of demand by service type, technology and platform across the fixed telephony, broadband and mobile sectors, in addition to a review of key regulatory trends.

Key Findings

The fixed broadband segment, fueled by adoption of next-generation networks (NGNs), is the most important driver for growth. Historically, Portugal has had low take-up of fixed broadband. Nonetheless, the country fares better than the average in the region when it comes to NGN technologies capable of providing at least 30Mbps. We expect the growth of fiber-based broadband to remain strong over the forecast period, helping Portugal reduce the broadband penetration gap with the major regional markets.

The fixed/mobile revenue split will be inclined toward mobile services. Despite the growth of fixed broadband, demand for fixed services is affected negatively by declining traditional fixed circuit-switched lines. In the mobile segment, LTE coverage is already better than in most European markets, edging close to 100% for all three operators. As a result, subscribers are replacing mobile voice services with mobile data services not only on 3G but also on 4G networks.

We expect further M&A over the coming quarters, especially in the cable segment. The Portuguese market has already gone through significant consolidation in the past two years. The most important change was the sale by Orange of its 20% stake in Sonaecom, the former parent company of Optimus. At the end of last year, Vodafone expressed its interest in acquiring a cable company in Portugal, after taking over cable companies in Spain and Germany. We believe that Cabovisao will be a primary acquisition target for Vodafone.